


Girls' Night In

by stardustandswimmingpools



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Boy Talk, Characters play D&D, Developing Friendships, Domestic Fluff, Dungeons & Dragons, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Girls' Night, Makeup, Sweet, a reclamation of the stereotypes of female friendship, girls supporting girls, give these three ladies a BREAK god damn, limited knowledge of dungeons & dragons, rating for language and general talk, slight artistic license on max's backstory, used the word 'lexicon' in this twice, walkie-talkies, which is twice more than most people use it in their life, will is gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 09:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustandswimmingpools/pseuds/stardustandswimmingpools
Summary: Eleven, Nancy, and Max take a well-deserved girls' night in.





	Girls' Night In

**Author's Note:**

> i'm trying to stop rambling so much in (a) tags and (b) notes, so i'll keep this short. i feel like we _need_ more of the three girls being friends!!! please enjoy this (quite lengthy, that was not intentional, but i'm happy with the result) domestic fluff (with healthy sprinkles of light angst). did i mention i'd literally lay down my life for any of these ladies? that is true.

When Dustin and Lucas start quarrelling for the umpteenth about how Lucas should have  _ hidden  _ from the mighty beast instead of faced it head on (“I thought I could beat it! I didn’t realize it was going to be so big, Dustin!”), and Eleven’s eyes start to glaze over again, Max grabs her wrist and tugs on her arm. “Come on, let’s go upstairs,”  she says. “This is dumb.”

El has never looked so grateful to have Max’s company. She leans in and touches Mike’s shoulder gently, and says, “I’m going upstairs with Max.”

“Yeah, cool, have fun,” Mike says distractedly. If it’d been Max she’d be pissed to be spoken to so dismissively, but then again, she doesn’t have anything near the closeness that Mike and El have, nor the unspoken comprehension. They understand each other through touches, facial expressions, hesitance and eagerness. It’s kind of amazing, in an almost codependent, dangerously smitten way.

Lucas tries to be smooth, which doesn’t work. It’s charming in its own self.

“Wait!” he cries out as Max is set to trudge up the stairs, El at her heel. He leaps out of his seat and shoves his walkie at them.

Max raises an eyebrow.

“So we can reach you,” he explains. Will snorts.

“We’re literally going to be in the same house,” Max deadpans.

“Just in case we need to ask your advice or something,” Lucas says. “In an emergency.”

The fact that  _ emergency _ is included in the Dungeons & Dragons lexicon is so amusing to Max that she refrains from teasing him for it. It’s also kind of nice to know that they value her opinion in these campaigns. She doesn’t know a lot about the game, but she does know a lot about _ gaming _ , and the strategy it requires.

El takes the walkie graciously. Then Lucas reclaims his seat (and Dustin and Will start jabbering about what a lame sucker he is), and the two girls climb the stairs to the main floor.

They nearly run straight into Nancy as they dash into the kitchen. “Woah!” she says, smiling at them. “Where are you two heading?”

“Nowhere,” El says.

“We came upstairs because they” — Max jerks her chin towards the basement — “were getting hard to listen to.”

Nancy nods wisely. “I know what you mean. They’re a handful.”

El makes a decisive nod. “It’s funny,” she adds. “When they argue.”

Max giggles. “Dustin’s face gets all red and Will just sighs like he’s so done with them.”

Nancy ruffles both of their hair. “Well, hey, you know what? Why don’t we just hang out, the three of us? Girls’ evening in.”

El’s face breaks into a massive smile. Her eyes crinkle and the whole room sort of lifts with her spirit. “Yes,” she says happily.

Max glances at El’s eager face and then Nancy’s kind one and she mumbles, “I’ve never had a girls’ evening.”

“Neither have I,” El says. She wraps a hand around Max’s wrist and says insistently, “Please? It will be fun with you and Nancy.”

“Yeah, c’mon, Max!” Nancy encourages.

Being pressed to do something fun with girls is not a feeling Max can honestly say she’s accustomed to. It feels good.

“Fine,” she acquiesces, a begrudging smile forming on her face. 

“Yay!” El cheers.

“First step to any good girls’ night,” Nancy instructs them, leading them into the kitchen and opening up a cabinet, “is popcorn.”

El’s face screws up in uncertainty. “Popcorn?”

Max and Nancy lock eyes and then slowly, grinning, turn to look at Eleven.

“Oh, El,” Max says. “Just wait ‘til you try _ this _ .”

* * *

 

 

Orville Redenbacher. It takes El a few tries to pin the name down. It’s a little lengthier than  _ Eggos _ , granted, but it seems to have taken root in El’s mind as a new favorite — demonstrated by the way she wolfs it down in handfuls.

Nancy laughs. “We should really stop giving you junk food. Ever heard of broccoli?”

El makes a disgusted face and sticks her tongue out. “Gross.”

“Gross,” Max agrees as they head upstairs, into Nancy’s bedroom, and close the door. Max is holding the popcorn defensively against herself so that El will stop eating it, although she pretends like she doesn’t see the stray pieces that somehow magically lift themselves out of the bowl and into El’s mouth.

“Hey, do  _ not _ talk shit about broccoli,” Nancy says, patting her bedspread. The girls obediently sit. “Broccoli is a great vegetable.”

“Broccoli is bad,” El argues. “I like apples.”

“Apples are good,” Max allows.

“So!” Nancy claps her hands together and wiggles her eyebrows. “Ready to indulge in some serious heavy-duty girl bonding?”

El giggles, and Max, a sarcastic response on the tip of her tongue, bites down the comment and giggles too.

She reminds herself that: she is going to have a good fucking time being a girl. She’s entitled to be a girl! Girls can wear makeup and still be badass. Just look at Eleven. 

“I think we need a list,” Nancy declares, so she jumps off her bed and tears a page out of her chemistry notebook. There’s a red pen lying across her dresser top, and she snatches it up. El and Max take turns munching on the popcorn, which is rapidly decreasing in quantity. “Alright, we’ll have to paint our nails.”

El, mouth full of popcorn, tries to protest, and Nancy gives her a look as her pen travels across the page. “ _ Again, _ ” she adds. “Hopper means well, but that man doesn’t know the first thing about polish. And then we’ll do each others’ hair and makeup, and...actually, how about we do all that first? And then we can do each others’ nails, and while we do  _ that, _ we can gossip about boys and school and things like that.” Nancy smiles at them. “What do you think?”

Max confirms her assent with a sharp nod. “Sounds sick.”

“Sick?” El says worriedly.

“It means cool,” Max amends. “Sounds cool, that’s what I meant.”

“Oh,” El says, still obviously a little put off by the fact that the word that ordinarily denote illness now also means  _ cool. _ She nods determinedly. “Sick.”

* * *

Halfway through Nancy braiding Max’s hair, and Max brushing El’s hair, the radio crackles to life.

“Max! El!” It’s Lucas. “Quick. We’re being snuffed out by an army of storm giants and there’s a fork in the road ahead. Mike says the left is a dead-end, so almost certain death, but if we can find the trapdoor there it will mask our scent from the giants — “

“Which is a stupid idea!” Dustin shouts through the walkie. “If we hide, they’ll find us, and we’ll be cornered!”

“No we won’t!” Will’s voice protests. “Guys, I think we should find the trapdoor. I’m good at finding trapdoors, you know that.”

“Yeah, but the  _ other _ way,” Lucas says, his voice growing louder and then slightly quieter, as if he’d yanked the walkie out of someone’s hands and accidentally brought it too close to his mouth, “goes into the Deserts of Unbidden Wishes. If we can navigate that, we’ll survive, and we’ll definitely be safe from the giants.”

“Which is what  _ I _ think we should do!” Dustin snaps.

“But we’ll almost definitely die!” Will points out. “Guys, none of us are equipped to handle the desert!”

Nancy looks at Max and El. “Are you gonna answer that? Sounds like they need you.” 

Max sighs. “El?”

“Trapdoor,” El answers.

Max nods. The walkie floats into her hand. With a forceful click, Max presses on the  _ talk _ button and says, “El and I both think trapdoor. Will is good at trapdoors. Now leave us alone.” She drops the walkie onto the comforter.

Nancy chuckles. “You told them.”

“Wait.” El picks up the walkie and talks into it. “Unless you want to bring us popcorn.”

Nancy and Max burst into laughter, and El does too. They fall into companionable silence. Max can feel Nancy’s deft fingers working their way through the newly shiny strands of hair on Max’s head. (“Dry shampoo,” Nancy had said, brandishing a spray bottle like a weapon. “Works like magic.”) She’s never had braided hair before. Actually, scratch that: she did for the Snow Ball, just the side, and her mom pinned it back. Ms. Mayfield is always trying to get Max to be a little bit more feminine, which just strengthens the urge to be a rebellious, masculine, badass woman. It hadn’t been uncomfortable, or even noticeable, really, then. Now she can feel all of her hair being pulled backwards. It doesn’t hurt or anything: it’s just very present. She will not look the same when Nancy’s done with her.

El has short, soft curls. It only takes like three minutes to pull the brush through all of them — lucky El. Max’s hair is thick and annoying and if she cared more about it she’d have a hell of a time taking care of it. 

Luckily El doesn't seem to mind letting Max play with her curls. Add to the list of things Max has never done: play with hair. It's not even like Lucas has any hair to play with. But it's fun to stick her fingers between the locks of El’s hair and watch them sift through it like water.

After a few moments of quiet, the radio crackles again. “Thanks,” says Dustin’s embarrassed voice. “You were right. Over.”

Max rolls her eyes and picks up the walkie. “I know,” she says.

El laughs. “Stop moving!” Nancy scolds, slapping Max’s wrist lightly. “I'm almost done. El, hand me that hair tie, will you?”

El doesn't move from the bed, but the hair tie on the vanity levitates through the air into Nancy’s hand.

“Show-off,” Nancy taunts.

“It's magic,” El replies, sticking her tongue out.

Nancy laughs. “Did Hopper tell you that?”

Max can see El’s eyes darken in the reflection of the mirror. “Hop said not to ‘strain myself.’”

“He meant well,” Nancy says. Max can feel her tying the end of her braid. “And he was right, you know. You were much safer with him.”

Nancy is a braver woman than Max. There's no way Max would ever say that kind of thing to a girl with superpowers who could literally throw her through a wall. Friends or not.

But El just sighs. “I know,” she says. “But I missed you guys.”

“We missed you too,” Nancy says. In a suggestive tone, she adds, “Especially Mike.”

“I missed Mike too,” Eleven says ruefully. It's a thing she does: make these incredibly blunt statements. She's wholly unabashed. Max envies her. There's a slight pause before El continues, “Sometimes I visited him.”

“What?” Max says, interjecting. “I thought you said you were on house arrest.”

“With a blindfold,” El explains. She turns around, abruptly yanking Max’s fingers out of her hair. 

“But I thought you needed a sensory deprivation tank for that,” Nancy says softly.

“A what?”

El shrugs. “I got better.”

“What happened?” Max interrupts loudly. “Will one of you please explain what you're talking about?”

“I don't understand it,” Nancy confesses.

El looks between the two of them, then thinks a minute. “Nancy,” she says. “Do you have a radio and a blindfold?”

* * *

So, okay, Max has no idea what's happening.

The radio in Nancy’s room is flicked between channels using El’s magical psychic powers until it lands on static. Apparently this is what El had been looking for, because she leaves the radio alone and takes a final glance at the picture of Nancy and Steve currently held in her hands. She ties a blue scarf around her eyes.

“So you're gonna find Steve?” Max says dubiously.

El nods.

“Well, don't tell us if he's doing anything weird.” Max laughs.

“Max!” Nancy has only really agreed to this for Eleven. It's obvious she isn't dying to know what Steve is up to. They probably haven't been on the best speaking terms. Calculated distance is how Max would describe it.

On her end, Max sees Steve on the whole more frequently than she expects. He and Dustin came out of the harrowing Demo-dog experience with a newly forged bond, albeit a somewhat reluctant one on Steve’s end. He drives them places and gives them life advice. It's like having an older brother, but an actually cool one, not a douchebag excuse for a human person, like Billy.

El finishes tying the blindfold and they sit in quiet patience, waiting. There’s no sound. El doesn’t flicker, or disappear, or gasp, or anything. It’s like the whole room is filled with a bubble. If Max talks, it’ll pop.

“Steve,” El suddenly whispers.

Max can tell she’s not just saying it.

She can actually _ see _ Steve.

The thought gives her chills. Psychic powers are neat, but also, what if El, like, spies on her? Not that she has any reason to, just...in general?

Nancy, it seems, can also tell. They’re both silent, and they keep staring at El.

“His face,” El says softly.

Nancy frowns. 

“Are you okay?” El says. Her voice sounds distant. Like, the sound itself is right there, coming from El, but it’s as if she’s talking to someone far away.

Max meets Nancy’s eyes, and collectively they agree: this is unnerving.

“Steve?” El sounds befuddled. “Steve?”

“El?” Max says tentatively, and El gasps and pushes the blindfold off her eyes. She looks around in alarm, which settles quickly into calm.

“His face,” she tells them, furrowing her brow in evident concern, “is purple and puffy.”

“What?” Nancy’s eyes go wide. “Did he get into another fight? Oh my god, what happened?”

“He was icing it,” El continues. “On the couch.”

Nancy’s shoulder slump. “That boy gets into too much trouble for his own good.”

Max shudders. “Promise you’ll never spy on me like that, and I’ll be totally cool with your superpowers.”

“Superpowers,” El repeats thoughtfully. “Like an X-men.”

Max smiles, a little confused but nevertheless endeared by El’s attempts at pop culture. “Yeah, sure.”

“I promise I will never spy on you unless it’s an emergency,” Eleven says, her piercing look offset by her light tone.

Max almost shivers again. She hopes there is never an emergency. “Deal.”

“Ladies, does anyone mind if we get back to the important stuff?” Nancy clicks her tongue. “Come on, El, I haven’t done your hair yet.”

El rolls her eyes, which might be the funniest thing she’s done so far.

* * *

Nancy does this fancy style in El’s hair where she takes the front strands and twists them around themselves, then ties them back around her head like a crown on the rest of her hair.

Max doesn’t really want to admit it, but Eleven is really pretty. Like, unfairly so. How come she gets the nice hair  _ and _ the cool powers? Doesn’t Max get anything?

She can ride a skateboard. Eleven probably can’t do that. Max clings to that small mercy.

Then Nancy does their makeup. It’s fun to watch her do Eleven’s, because she’s such an expert. She says things like, “This color is way too pigmented,” and, “This doesn’t match your skin tone at all.” It’s like Max is learning a whole new lexicon. And Max loves learning new words. Call her geeky, whatever, she’s always been good in English class.

It’s also a good thing that El is here, because she asks all of the questions that Max is too embarrassed to ask.

“What is a skin tone?” she says.

“The shade of your skin,” Nancy replies without a break in concentration. Max glances down at her wrist. She’s pale. She knows that, at least. If she had to guess what Eleven’s skin tone was, solely based on her skin-tone-vocabulary, she’d probably say  _ fair. _ Or  _ light. _ That probably isn’t a real thing.

“And what is that?” El asks, wrinkling her nose as she pulls away from a big, puffy brush that Nancy is hovering just inches from her face.

Nancy puts her hands on her hips. “Do you trust me, ma’am? It’s a kabuki brush.”

Max sputters out laughter. “Excuse me?” she giggles. “A what now?”

Nancy purses her lips. “A kabuki brush. And you better watch it, girls, or I’ll kabuki you  _ both _ , you hear?”

El and Max fall into a puddle of giggles, and it takes awhile for them to compose themselves again.

Halfway through Max’s own face of makeup being put on — Eleven is done, and she of course is glowing with joy — there’s a knock on the door.

“Is everyone decent? Is everyone wearing clothes? Can I open the door?” Mike’s voice asks through the wood.

Nancy covers her mouth and muffles her laugh in her palm. “Mike! What are you doing up here?” When she sees El’s frantic head-shaking and the doorknob turning, she adds quickly, “Don’t come in!”

“Ah! Who’s naked?”

“Don’t be disgusting!” Max calls out. “We just don’t want boys tainting our girly air.”

“That’s gross,” Mike says, and he definitely sounds grossed out. “Please just open the door? I brought you popcorn.”

El’s eyes widen. “I don’t want him to see me yet,” she explains to Nancy and Max in a hushed whisper.

Nancy nods, grinning in a sly way. “On it.” To Mike, she says, “I’m gonna open the door a little bit, okay? But you don’t get to see these beautiful ladies until I’m through with them.”

“You’re such a buzzkill, Nancy,” Mike whines.

“Thank you, Mike,” El says towards the door as Nancy cracks the door open to switch the empty popcorn bowl for Mike’s full one. 

She kisses his cheek, pats his hair, then says, “Off you go, back to your giants.”

“Orcs, actually,” Mike says before he can stop himself. “You’re welcome, El. Do you like the popcorn?”

“A lot.”

Mike chuckles.

“Mike,” Nancy says flatly. “Scram!”

“All right, okay! I’m going!”

When Mike is gone, Nancy returns to her kabuki brush and brandishes it like a sword. “Where was I?”

“Somewhere around my left eye, I think,” Max jokes.

* * *

“Woah,” Max whispers, and leans closer to the mirror, trying to figure exactly what Nancy did to make her look like...make her look…

“Pretty,” El murmurs, her hand reaching out to press flat against the mirror.

Max turns to El. “Yeah, no kidding.”

El runs her fingers through her hair. “I have hair this time,” she says, turning to face Nancy and giggling a little bit.

Max tilts her head. “What?”

“Oh — when El was here last year, she had a buzz cut, so my brother gave her a wig,” Nancy says. “From my room,” she adds, although she reaches out to rub El’s back as she says it, so Max assumes there’s no malicious intent there.

“A buzz cut?” Max repeats. “Sick.”

“Sick,” El says.

“Alright, now that you’ve sufficiently gazed upon yourselves with wonderment, let’s move on to phase three of our epic girls’ night,” Nancy says, holding herself in a stately manner, like she’s all that. It makes Max laugh, which makes her feel much more like herself. Braided-hair, made-up-face Max is pretty, but she’s not really...Max. Holding up a big bag full of what sounds like small glass bottle clinking each other, Nancy says, “Nail polish and boy talk.”   


* * *

 

They each select their colors with care. Nancy dumps out the bottles and they all sift through.

“I want blue,” Eleven announces.

“I have so much blue,” Nancy says, and proceeds to extract every shade of blue that she owns and set them down in a line in front of Eleven. “Take your pick.”

“Too much blue,” Eleven says, giggling. She picks out a deep royal hue. Max takes blood red. 

There’s only so much girly a girl can take, after all. And she has a reputation to maintain. Also, the red looks fucking cool.

Nancy chooses light yellow. When Max wrinkles her nose, Nancy wisely says, “Yellow is a pretty color. It’s like...flowers and sunshine.”

“And piss,” Max mutters.

“Excuse me?”

Max grins. “Nothing.”

“That’s what I  _ thought _ you said.” Nancy lifts her chin snobbishly before she devolves into giggles. It’s only a moment before Eleven and Max are joining her.

Sometimes Max wonders if they laugh so much to remind themselves that they’re all there, alive, healthy, breathing, and not dead. Watching Lucas — watching any of the boys, watching Eleven laugh is like fresh air: she thinks,  _ we may be scarred but we are still here, and we are capable of doing things like laughing. _ Sometimes it feels like this is the only thing they can do: just laugh until the terror of waking up in another dimension dissipates. 

It’s getting to feel like that fear will never go away. But the giggles help. It’s like bubbles in her stomach. That, she muses, is how Eleven would describe it.

“I’ll do Max’s, and then I’ll do El’s, and then Max can do one of my hands while El does the other,” Nancy says. She holds up their three colors: red, yellow, blue.

“Primary colors,” Eleven observes.

Max turns to look at her, then looks back at the trio of polishes. “Hey, she’s right. They’re the primary colors.” Although where did El learn about primary colors?

Nancy smiles in a different way than she normally does: instead of a wide smile that shows all her teeth, it’s sort of...timid. It’s an Eleven smile.

“Seems like even the nail polish knows we deserve each other.” 

It’s a moment. Then Nancy claps her hands together and says, “Max, hands!” and the moment is gone. But the feeling is still there. The closeness.

* * *

It takes Nancy exactly twelve seconds to start talking. “So,” she says conspiratorially, looking up at Max and then at Eleven with an instigating grin. “Who’s gonna spill first?”

“Spill?” Eleven repeats.

“Yeah, who’s gonna tell me about their boyfriend first?”

Max blushes  _ hard _ , which definitely does not help her argument of “Lucas isn’t my boyfriend!”

Nancy purses her lips, blatantly unconvinced. “Sure. So is he a good boyfriend?”

“He’s not my — he’s not —” Max glances between Nancy with a raised eyebrow and Eleven who looks slightly befuddled by this denial, and sighs in surrender. “He’s nice,” she mumbles. Her ears are  _ definitely _ bright red.

“Hey, El, you should take your nail polish off so that I can repaint them when I finish with Max,” Nancy says. She’s kind of like a business owner: very together and very prepared. “In that bag there should be a pink bottle of nail polish remover. Yep, that’s it — and cotton balls. Now you just — hold on a second, Max.” After a proper demonstration of how to put the remover on the cotton ball, Nancy is back to carefully making brush strokes on Max’s bare and bitten nails. Eleven starts to scrub at her terrible nail polish with an unmatched intensity. Then, as if she’d never switched topics, Nancy says, “I’m happy for you guys. Lucas, especially — I mean, only because I just met you, Max. I’m super happy for you. But Lucas has...he’s had a hard time. They’ve all had a hard time. It’s hard to be a geek in middle school. Girls in middle school don’t like geeks.” She shrugs. “I’m just glad you guys have each other, that’s all.”

“It’s not like we’re married or anything,” Max says defensively. Her face is warm. “Jeez. It’s not a big deal. We just kinda like each other.”

Nancy laughs. “You have no idea how lucky you are to have that.”

“But Nancy,” Eleven puts in, which startles Max for a second. Sometimes Eleven gets so goddamn quiet that Max forgets she’s there. When she looks over at her friend, she sees that the nail polish is halfway gone on her left hand. How the hell did she manage that so fast? “I thought you had Steve.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says lightly. “It’s complicated, El.”

“Explain.”

Max expects that Nancy will say something like  _ not right now _ or  _ ask Joyce  _ or even  _ it’s none of your business. _ She should know better than to assume that, maybe. The truth is, the way in which Eleven asks about things is so earnest and inquisitive. You feel compelled to tell her the answers. Even if you don’t have them. Like Nancy, right now.

Nevertheless, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear before continuing to paint the red polish onto Max’s nails with precision. As she paints, she talks. “I was dating Steve. After you...after you beat the demogorgon, Steve and I were dating. We were in love.” She sighs. It doesn’t sound sad, and it certainly isn’t a happy sigh. It’s reminiscent, if Max had to put a name to it. Nostalgic. Bittersweet. “But it was hard, because being with Steve was like...the easy choice. Like we could just date and be in love and forget about everything — about Will, about Barb, about you.” She smiles gently. “It’s hard to explain, to be honest. With Jonathan I…” Nancy trails off, shakes her head, and the previously-tucked strand of hair falls in front of her face. Nancy is definitely pretty and subtle enough to be on TV, Max absently decides.

“With Jonathan you…” Eleven prompts.

Nancy chuckles. “It’s just...I did love Steve. I really did. I loved Steve, but I wanted to deal with what had happened with Barb. I wanted comeuppance.” At Eleven’s confused expression: “Kind of like revenge, in a way. I wanted people to know what had happened with her. And Steve, bless his heart, he couldn’t...understand that. His priority was safety. I don’t know. He loved me. I know that. But I couldn’t reconcile — I couldn’t put together those two things — loving Steve and not being able to bring justice to Barb’s name.” Helpless in her memory, she shrugs, tugs on her sweater collar absentmindedly. “And with Jonathan — he understood. He understood that even if it wasn’t safe, I had to somehow make people see that Barb was dead and it was these people’s fault. He knew that and…” Exhale. “And he still liked me, I guess.”

Max says, “This sounds suspiciously like a life lesson.”

Nancy laughs. She picks up the nail polish brush and pokes Max’s wrist with it, leaving a small red stain. “Hey!” Max exclaims.

“It’s not a life lesson. It’s just...you’re so lucky. Both of you. I mean, yeah, you shared these terrible, life-threatening, nightmarish experiences, but you  _ shared _ them, that’s the point. And you guys are kids. You’re kids!” She doesn’t say it condescendingly and it doesn’t come out that way. It’s like she’s giving them permission to not be perfect. “You’re kids and you’ve already got these immeasurably deep bonds. Bonds that will never break. There’s no complication there. You have Lucas, and El, you have Mike — which, by the way, we will definitely get to — and you don’t have to think about it.” With a final shrug and a last brushstroke, she says, “Switch hands.” Then she looks up. El is misty-eyed. “Oh, nope, no way. That’s not happening. There is no crying allowed at this girls’ night. Not one bit. Come on, stop it. I’m very happy! I’ve got crazy girls like you. Who wouldn’t be happy with that?”

Eleven’s smile is tentative. “But aren’t you…mad?”

Nancy is understandably baffled. “Mad about what, exactly?”

Eleven shrugs. “We’re happy. You’re sad.”

“I’m not sad, goofball.” Nancy rubs her shoulder affectionately. “I just have some stuff I need to deal with. And you guys are helping. So let’s keep it moving, yeah?”

“Boys are stupid,” Max proclaims.

“Boys are stupid,” Eleven echoes. And then, in regret: “Except Mike! And Lucas and Dustin and Will.”

“And Jonathan and Steve,” Nancy puts in.

“Billy’s stupid,” Max mumbles.

“Yeah, but luckily you won’t need to deal with him much longer.” Max concentrates on watching Nancy paint her nails: brush up, brush up again, dip, brush on one more time. She uses her own (long) nails to clean up any outside coloring. It’s obvious she’s done this a lot of times before. “He’ll be off to college soon. Like Steve. Probably.”

“If he even gets into college,” Max says, rolling his eyes. “If he even applies.”

“Max,” Nancy says, “I think Billy wants to get out of here as much as you want him out of here.”

“Then it’ll just be me and my stupid stepdad,” Max says, in a sarcastically cheery voice.

“What is a stepdad?” El questions.

“Like...my parents separated, and then my mom got married again, but not to my dad. It was to a different guy — Billy’s dad. So he’s not my biological dad, but since he’s married to my mom he’s  _ technically _ my dad, so he’s called my stepdad.” Max finishes off her brief speech with, “And he’s a huge asshole!”

“Damn right!” Nancy says. She’s smiling — genuinely, it seems. Whatever lingering remorse she’d had moments ago about her Steve/Jonathan dilemma seem to have vanished into thin air. It’s amazing, what a few minutes with a few girls can do.

“Damn right!” Eleven repeats, also grinning.

“So El, tell us all about your adorable thing with Mike,” Max says, prodding Eleven with her elbow. 

“I like him.” She says it with such seriousness that for a second Max wonders if it will be followed by something horrible like  _ but I can’t be with him _ , et cetera. Soap-opera style. Not that she watches soap operas, but her mom does all the time. 

No bad news follows, so Max ventures, “Are you guys...like, dating?”

“Dating,” Eleven says thoughtfully. “When you really like someone as more than just a friend, so you spend a lot of time with them and hold their hand and kiss them and it makes your stomach feel funny.”

Max blinks.

“Hop explained it,” she says as an afterthought, which certainly reveals where Eleven got so many words.

“Well, you do all of those things with Mike,” Max points out. 

Eleven nods shyly. Then she looks up and her sincere brown eyes land on Nancy. “Why does it do the stomach thing?”

Nancy glances up briefly. “Butterflies?”

“Butterflies?” Eleven cries.

“No!” Max quickly rectifies. “Not real butterflies. You don’t have any animals in your stomach, El.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. “Metaphorical butterflies, I meant. It’s just what people call that feeling. I mean, doesn’t it feel like butterflies are flying around in your ribcage?”

“Infinity butterflies,” El admits. She’s probably just learnt the word  _ infinity. _ Max has the strangest urge to tell her that infinity is not a certifiable number, just an uncountable quantity, therefore it would be impossible to have infinity butterflies.

God, she is spending  _ way _ too much time with the A/V club.

“That’s what it feels like to have a crush on someone,” Nancy tells Eleven.

Eleven’s eyes rake over the contents of the walls in the room as she carries on scrubbing at the last two fingers of nail polish still left on her nails, now rubbing unconsciously. “I learned about ‘crush’. It means liking someone more than a friend. Like Mike.”

“Like Mike,” Nancy agrees.

“Are you always this invested in your brother’s love life?” Max asks.

Nancy smirks. “What love life?” Which Max laughs at. “Seriously, though. I know he can be a little bitch sometimes, but he’s my brother, and I love him. He was so torn up when Eleven disappeared the first time.” Eleven looks over. She must know this by now, but the reassurance that she was missed, Max imagines, must feel nice. To know that it wasn’t a one-sided thing. “Yeah,” Nancy continues, now directly speaking to El. “He sulked for  _ weeks. _ Just moped around. We finally got him to be a functioning member of society again, but you could just tell it wasn’t the same. I’m glad you’re back, El.” 

When Nancy gives that big, wholehearted smile, Max’s heart aches for a sister. Instead of saying this, she says, “Yeah, and Mike is  _ definitely  _ glad.”

Eleven’s cheeks turn the slightest shade of pink, and Max wonders if Eleven knows that, or even knows that this kind of teasing usually makes people cover their face with their hands. Contrarily, Eleven’s shy smile is back, and it creeps over her face. “Good.”

Good. That’s all she has to say.

It speaks volumes. Which is another thing Max wishes she could do. Communicate more with fewer words. Just the best words. Life would be so much easier.

“Alright, we spilled,” she says. “Your turn, Nancy. What about you?”

“Nope,” Nancy says, shaking her head as she paints the pinky nail on Max’s left hand. “I already poured my love life crises onto you guys. You don’t need to hear about those.”

“I want to know,” Eleven pipes up.

“Maybe we can help,” Max offers. “We’re smart.”

Eleven nods like she’s reinforcing this claim. Nancy shakes her head. Her ponytail whips around her face. “There’s nothing you guys can do. I have to solve this one on my own.”

“Did you talk to Steve?” Max prods.

Nancy gives Max a look, and Max holds her gaze firmly. Finally, Nancy says, “Yeah. It didn’t go well. He’s mad at me. He should be. I deserve it.”

“He’ll get over it,” Max says confidently. “He’s really full of himself. It’s the hair, I think.”

“Steve is a smart guy,” Nancy says. The way she says it, like she’s defending his honor, makes Max shut up. Obviously there are some unresolved issues there. Nancy likes Jonathan, obviously, but they aren’t dating. It must be because she still likes Steve.

God. Love triangles are exhausting.

“He knows I already feel like crap for what...for what happened.” Max doesn’t know exactly what  _ happened _ , but she can take an educated guess. “I just have to make peace with myself. He’s already over it, I think. He’s waiting for me to be over it too.”

“And then you’ll be together?” Eleven asks.

“No,” Nancy says, “I think Steve and I are done. Permanently.” There’s definitely a bittersweet sentiment in that proclamation.

“Hey,” Max says uncomfortably, “no crying allowed.”

“I’m not crying,” Nancy says, lightly pushing Max’s shoulder. “And I’m done with your hands. Let those dry. Don’t touch anything. El, c’mere.”

Max and Eleven swap places and Nancy gets to work on Eleven’s newly de-polished fingernails. Max admires the handiwork on her own. “These look wicked, Nancy,” she says. “Thanks.”

“I aim to please,” Nancy says.

Just then, the radio comes online.

“El? Max?”

It’s Mike’s tentative voice. Max, incapacitated by her new nails, says, “Pick up, El.”

Instead it’s Nancy who picks up. “Mike, stop interrupting! We’re trying to bond here!”

“Max’s brother is here. Over,” Mike says nervously through the supercom.

Everything in the room stills and Max’s eyes widen as her heart pounds. “Let me talk,” she says to Nancy. Nancy obliges, holding the walkie to Max’s mouth.

“Tell him to piss off,” she says. 

“You think I’m gonna say that to your brother? Nice try, Mayfield. Over,” Mike replies.

“Tell him Max is staying over,” Nancy says into the walkie.

Max’s head snaps up. “What? I’m not staying over.”

“You are now,” Nancy says, smiling. “You can sleep on my floor. Or in the basement, in El’s fort.”

“Floor,” Max says, “definitely. But Nancy, you really don’t have to —”

“You’re gonna have to go home eventually,” Nancy interrupts. “Let’s just draw out that homecoming as long as we can, okay? I can’t fix everything, but I can do the right thing. Besides, it’ll be fun.”

Max feels a smile break across her face. “Thank you,” she says earnestly.

“She is?” Mike says through the supercom. “I don’t think girls are allowed to sleep over here, Nance. And say  _ over _ when you’re done talking. Over.”

“I’m a girl, dumbass,” Nancy replies. “She’ll sleep in my room.”

“Oh,” Mike says. “Uh, okay. But I’m not telling that to Crazy McManiac. Over.”

“I’ll tell him,” Nancy sighs. “Just give me a minute. I’m painting nails.”

“Say over when you’re done! Okay, but...hurry up, because he looks impatient. Over.”

Max looks over at Eleven, who looks crestfallen, and says, “Wait, Nancy. Could — could Eleven stay over too?”

Nancy looks over at Eleven and Eleven looks up at both of them. “Oh my god, El, I’m so sorry,” Nancy says. “Of course you can stay over!”

“Not allowed,” Eleven says, shaking her head. “Hop says I can’t.”

“Hopper can get over himself,” Nancy says firmly. “It’s a girls’ sleepover. It’ll be fun. Come on, please?”

Eleven, it seems, is as vulnerable to puppy eyes as the rest of them. “Okay,” she concedes. “If Hop says yes.”

“Yes!” Nancy clicks the supercom and says, “Mike, Eleven is staying over too.”

“I am  _ not _ having  _ that _ conversation with the Chief,” Mike says forcefully. “Over.”

“Okay, Jesus! I’m coming downstairs and we can sort it all out.” After a moment, she adds, “Over and out.”

She puts the walkie down and paints the last brushstroke on Eleven’s thumb, then says, “Give me a few minutes, guys. I’ll be right back.”

* * *

Max hasn’t slept over at someone’s house in more or less her entire life. That’s a lie: she slept at her California friends’ houses, but it never felt like she was having a sleepover with  _ friends _ . God, California was rough.

She doesn’t want to get worked up over where she’ll sleep and when or whether they’ll all sleep in Nancy’s room or whether they’ll actually interact with Mike at all — it is his house, and they are his friends — or any of that stuff. She doesn’t want to cause trouble or panic. El hasn’t really slept over at anyone’s house either, because Hopper doesn’t trust Mike at all, and she’s not quite close enough with the other boys to sleep over at their houses. And there’s no way in hell Max is inviting  _ anyone _ over to her warzone of a residence.

Nancy comes back upstairs. “I sent Billy away,” she tells Max, which elicits a sigh of relief. To El, she says, “And I just barely convinced Hopper to let you stay. I think he thinks this is some crazy plot to let you and Mike have a sleepover, but I persuaded him.” She grins. “So? Girls' sleepover?”

“Hell yeah,” Max says, in an attempt to get in the spirit. It works, kind of. Especially when Eleven jumps in with her own echo of “Hell yeah!”

“Hell yeah!” Nancy says. “Okay, El, let me finish your nails. And then I think we can show you two off, yeah?”

“To Mike?” Eleven asks.

Max snorts. “Yeah, El. Your boyfriend.”

“And Lucas,” Eleven shoots back.

Max blushes. “He’s not my boyfriend!”

“Boyfriend,” Eleven insists, sticking her tongue out. Then she gets serious. “He likes you, Max.” 

“Shut up,” Max says, instead of acknowledging this obviously true fact. She likes Lucas too, but it doesn’t have to be a big deal or anything.

“No, El is right,” Nancy says, smirking and nodding perceptively.

“Get off my case!” Max whines. “Finish El’s nails, would you?”

“Just saying,” Nancy says, holding up her hands in surrender. “Give me your hand, El.”

* * *

Lucas’s jaw is the first to drop, mostly because Lucas is really extra about everything. Mike just kind of stammers into silence.

“How’d I do?” Nancy asks.

Dustin is staring with a sort of distant sense of admiration. To Max’s surprise, he’s the first to recover his voice. Although, in fairness, Will doesn’t really look that dumbstruck. Not that Max had expected him to. It looks more like he doesn’t realize he’s supposed to be impressed.

“Nicely,” Dustin says, nodding appreciatively.

“You guys look good,” Will puts in. He’s fiddling with a figurine of a demogorgon. That still freaks Max out. Will had literally been  _ possessed _ a couple weeks ago, and yet here he is, playing with that stupid figurine. If it’d been Max, she’d have burned the thing.

“Yeah,” Lucas manages. He makes a valiant effort to reclaim his suave attitude, and fails horrendously. “Really — really good. Especially you, Max. With all the —” He gestures at his face like he’s suddenly gone spastic. Max can’t help but smirk. “It’s good,” Lucas finishes, blushing. 

“Do you like it?” Eleven asks uncertainly. Not to the room at large, even though she doesn’t say anyone’s name. She’s definitely asking Mike.

Mike swallows. He says, “You look pretty.” And then, blushing even deeper than Lucas, up his neck to the tips of his ears, he adds, “A knockout.”

“Lame,” Dustin whispers.

Mike elbows him.

“A...knockout?” Eleven repeats. 

“It means you look so good it’s gonna knock him out,” Max supplies, smirk growing wider.

“Shut up, Max,” Mike says.

“Hey, you said it, not me.” She holds up her hands, mirroring Nancy only minutes ago.

Eleven seems beyond pleased by this reaction from Mike. She smiles shyly. “Bitchin’.”

“Definitely bitchin’,” Mike agrees, bobbing his head like a dog. Mike is like a dog a lot. He trails after El and gets stuff for her and pretty much heeds her every command, seldom though she ever makes one.

Lucas is his own guy, but Max likes that. She doesn’t want him to depend on her at every turn. She likes that he’s independent. And she likes his dorky confidence. It’s cute. If she ever vocalized those thoughts, she’d never live it down, but she really likes him.

It’s also fun that she can make him stammer. Lucas does many things, but stammer is rarely one of them.

“Did you finish your campaign?” Max asks.

Will nods like he’s finally being included. It’s — there’s something...different about Will. Not the previously-possessed-by-an-evil-mythical-creature-from-another-dimension kind of different. There’s something else. Not something bad, just a little bit off, like when you sit at a desk but one of the legs is a little shorter than the rest, so it tilts back and forth. He reacts to people differently than the rest of the boys. He’s much less invested in girls, for one. In fact, he’s not really invested in them at all.

Max counts him as lucky that he hasn’t been possessed by crushes yet. At least he’s escaped that bug.

“We finally got those stupid giants off of us,” he starts, enthusiastically gesturing with his hands, “and then we had to go all the way back down that trail, because there was this cave…”

Max watches Will talk and she listens as the other boys jump in with details (“We almost got stuck in quicksand —” “Yeah, which  _ I _ recognized!” “Lucas, shut up! Let Will finish!”). They’re the geekiest boys she’s ever met in her whole life.

It’s almost embarrassing how much she likes hanging out with them.

“Okay, enough,” Nancy says, waving her hands as if to clear the air of the words that they’ve just been nearly attacked with. “We get it. You guys won. Congratulations.”

“You can’t win a campaign, Nancy,” Mike says, rolling her eyes. “God.”

“Don’t take that tone of voice with me, mister —”

“If you didn’t say stupid things — !”

“Don’t fight!” Eleven says loudly. When the room quiets (god, how does she do that? Just command a room? Max is envious. She can sometimes do that — but only out of fear, because Max gives off this badass aura. El does it because she’s compelling), she continues, “Friends talk. We can all talk.”

“I can’t,” Lucas says. He seems to have recovered his voice. “I have to go home. If I don’t get home on time my little sister will bitch about it forever.”

“You have a sister?” Eleven says, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Yeah,” Lucas grumbles. “Unfortunately.”

This definitely confuses Eleven. It’s starting to look like she has set concepts of how people relate to other people. If Nancy is a nice sister, then Lucas’s sister must be too. Max only met Erica once, briefly, and she’d say it did not go so well. 

(“Is this your  _ giiiirlfriend, _ Lukey?”

“Shut up, Erica! Max is my friend, okay? We’re going to meet Will and Dustin and Mike and El at the arcade.”

“Mm-hm.”)

It’s almost like watching a child grow up. Eleven is slowly learning things about the world. Max lets her take it at her pace. She’s not a teacher, after all. Eleven’s worldly education isn’t her responsibility. It’s a privilege, sometimes — getting to tell El about concepts like  _ getting an F _ or  _ metaphors _ . It makes Max feel smart. But she doesn’t feel the need to tell her everything, like that not all sisters are nice, and not all boys are friendly geeks. El will figure it out in her own time. Max had to.

“I should go home too,” Will says. “My mom…”

He trails off, but everyone knows that Joyce Byers would blow a gasket if Will ever got home one second past the time he says he’ll be there. For awhile she didn’t even let him leave the house without her or Jonathan. They’re lucky he managed to escape that.

Dustin shrugs. “Alright, well, if you guys are going then so am I.”

“Dustin!” Mike says. “You don’t have to leave.”

“Nah, my mom will want me home.” Dustin yawns. “Plus, I’m tired.”

“Jerk,” Mike mutters.

“That’s our cue to leave,” Nancy whispers to Max and El.

They share a glance. “See you tomorrow, guys,” Max says, waving.

Eleven nods her assent. “Goodnight, Mike,” she says, still sporting that shy smile.

Mike’s bickering breaks off. “‘Night, El. Sleep well.”

“You too,” Eleven says.

“Get a room,” Max says, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly.

“Max!” Nancy exclaims, nudging her.

“Get a room?” Eleven asks.

“Another day,” Nancy says. “We are not having that discussion right now.”

“What discussion?”

“Nope, sorry. Ask Hopper. On second thought, absolutely do not ask Hopper. Just forget it.”

Eleven shrugs helplessly. “Okay.”

They trudge up the stairs one by one. Max follows Nancy and El follows Max, and Max doesn’t miss the way she lingers a moment, staring at Mike, before following. She smirks knowingly and takes the last steps upstairs.

“Mom!” Nancy yells as they all turn around the banister to climb the second set of stairs. “El and Max are staying over! I’m getting sleeping bags!”

“Okay!” Ms. Wheeler’s voice says, sounding tired. 

This is enough of an answer for Nancy. They head upstairs and Nancy retrieves two sleeping bags from the linens closet. She throws them on the floor of her bedroom, brushes her hands off (which is performative; the linen closet is dust-free and the walk from there to Nancy’s room is like three feet), and then yawns. “Bedtime, I think,” she announces.

They set up the sleeping bags (which is a feat for El, who has never before seen a sleeping bag, and makes the most astounded expression when the huge thing comes from such a small bag). Max calls dibs on the mummy one, and Nancy grabs them both pillows, and finally they settle in.

It’s 10:30 on Nancy’s clock, and when Nancy clicks the lights off the time glows a little brighter in the darkness. El yawns. It’s beyond adorable when El yawns. Everything Eleven does is adorable. Max sometimes gets irrationally annoyed about that. She doesn’t want to be adorable, but it couldn’t hurt.

Max yawns last, and curls over in her sleeping bag. “Hey, Nancy,” she says tentatively. “Thanks for letting us stay.”

“Thanks for staying,” Nancy says simply.

Eleven murmurs, “Thank you, Nancy.”

Max smiles despite herself, hidden in the mummy sleeping bag. She closes her eyes and only then does she realize how tired she really is. It’s later than Max normally goes to bed. When Eleven reaches over and takes her hand, Max doesn’t pull it away.

Girls’ sleepovers in California were always about staying up all night and gossiping and trash-talking dumb boys and other stupid stuff. But this, Max reflects, going to bed at 10:30, doing nails and hair and making conversation and being friends — this is better. 

Being friends is better.

She falls asleep with her hand in El’s.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> nancy's mention of her and steve talking is a reference to my other fic, [another hollow-point conversation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12646479). you are encouraged to read that as well! i'm on tumblr as [@vivilevone](http://vivilevone.tumblr.com/) so feel free to come find me. thank you for reading!


End file.
